Most Americans want to like the police. It’s just that so many of us have had bad experiences with them and that makes it difficult. If you grow up in a city, especially one with a moderate or high crime rate, you will learn not to trust the cops from a young age. For most of us, it starts in our teenage years. It’s even worse if you aren’t white or dress somewhat unconventionally. Yes we’ve all heard it said that not all police are bad and it’s unfair that a few bad ones tarnish the reputation of the whole institution. We all know that’s true. That line of reasoning doesn’t go so far when you get harassed, surveilled, and bullied on a weekly basis by the jerks in blue when you aren’t doing anything worse than walking to the corner grocery store or going to school. All that is just surface level annoyance though. There are deep problems with corruption in polic forces all across the country; NYPD is especially notorious for playing dirty, taking graft for allowing gambling, prostitution, drug dealing, and all kinds of crime. This isn’t something the media made up; any New Yorker will tell you it’s real and many of them know from experience.
Then a man like Frank Serpico comes along and tries to blow the whole rotten pustule open for all to see, but in his case, the little that got seen did nothing to stop the rot which was feeding on all levels of the law enforcement system. Peter Maas’s Serpico: The Cop Who Defied the System gives the full run down on this singularly courageous man who tried to fix what had gone wrong. Written like a novel, it is a compelling biography that succeeds because he makes the protagonist a character that is easy to relate to.
Frank Serpico, like so many other great Americans, was the son of immigrants. His family were hard-working Neapolitans who came over from Italy. As a boy he developed a precocious interest in guns and a fascination for police which was partly influenced by their heroic portrayals in the movies and television. He also loved reading and developed an intellectual side that is rare among people who seek employment as police officers, most of which tend to be blue collar with low levels of education.
When Serpico realized his dream of becoming a cop, he exceeded in his duty, courageously making arrests that other policemen were too lazy or scared to get involved with. He immediately became an outsider on the force, not only because of his desire to be the best, but also because he started to see all the corruption; his partners routinely accepted bribes and many of them found places to sleep when they should have been out patrolling the streets. Even worse, Serpico grew a beard and long hair and began looking a little too bohemian for the other cops who thought he was gay or else some kind of hippie radical.
After being transferred to different departments, the corruption got even worse. He realized that the NYPD were actively working with criminals and encouraging crime for the sake of taking bribes. Many of these cops even chose their jobs for that reason alone. This was nothing new; the number of men seeking employment as cops during the Prohibition era spiked for the exact same reason, for example. When Serpico tried to fight the corruption by taking his case to the highest levels of the police department, he was met with nothing but cold shoulders. He eventually took his story to the media and testified in court on the issue of police corruption, but very little was done to stop the problem. Then during a drug bust gone wrong, he got shot in the face. Although he survived, there were sympathy cards he received in the mail from members of the police force who said they wished he had died.
This is a very accessible and visually stimulating book. What really works though is the way the author makes you feel Serpico’s frustrations and disappointment. You know from the start that Serpico will lose but the writing style really brings you close to his emotions and states of mind. The downside of this descriptive writing is that at times Peter Maas veers into purple prose with excessive use of adjectives that becomes slightly annoying. And while the anecdotes about Serpico’s early years as a cop are true, Maas writes about him as if he is a superhero, larger than life and a little cartoonish as he fights for truth, justice, and the American way. It comes off as too good to be true, even though those stories are true. Fortunately, these weaker parts of the writing are at the beginning of the story and don’t continue all the way through.
Serpico is a great book. In fact it was so great that it got made into a classic movie starring Al Pacino around the peak of his career in the 1970s, which is one hell of a credential. The book is somewhat better because Peter Maas makes Serpico so easy to relate to. If you have ever had big dreams of doing something great and then getting disillusioned after you got there, this biography will strike a cord with you. You don’t have to be an honest police officer to relate to Frank Serpico. I myself have been a teacher for twenty years and my experiences with the educational system have been similar to what he went through. I reached a point where I no longer want to have anything to do with such a dirty business. Frank Serpico’s dream was to work for a police force in which the bad cops feared the good cops and what he found was something the opposite way around. He failed in his mission but that fact that he tried is enough to restore a dash of faith in humanity. At least there are some people out there who want things to be right. Frank Serpico was heroic and that is why his story deserves to be remembered.
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